Thread: [Image]How to easily speed up your BSNL BroadBand Connection

Tip 1: One of the major problems with BSNL Dataone Broadband connection is the DNS servers they provide by default. Most of the time they are very slow and sometimes they fail to respond. I noticed that I am starting to spend a significant amount of time in DNS resolution with Dataone connection, often it is larger than the time it takes to actually get the reponse. Here is a simple solution to significantly speed up your DNS resolution.

Open up the network connection profile and edit TCP/IP settings. In the DNS server address fields, specify the following DNS server addresses: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
Disconnect the connection and then connect again. You are done.
This specifies third party DNS servers which are significantly faster than BSNL Dataone’s DNS servers.


Tip 2: Firefox users can use FlashBlock extension to prevent downloading of Flash content by default, thereby significantly speeding up browsing experience. You can click on the placeholder icon to display the original Flash content any time. This is more of a passive tip in that reduces data usage to improve your overall experience.

Tip 3: You can try to increase your broadband bandwidth tweaking the TCP/IP parameters. The process is simplified by using TCPOptimizer, a free tool. It helped me a lot but your mileage may vary.


Also, there's nice little tweak for XP. Microsoft reserve 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes. This also affects your Broadband peformance. You can get back this 20% as follows:

Click Start-->Run-->type "gpedit.msc" without the "
This opens the group policy editor. Then go to:
Local Computer Policy-->Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->Network-->QOS Packet Scheduler-->
Limit Reservable Bandwidth
Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab :

"By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this
setting to override the default."
So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO.
This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%.

Hi,
this a good article. but i would like to point out that the last mentioned tip need not be resorted to,as it is actually a myth.

the band width is still available and is allocated only if a program specifically requests it.

Pls read the following microsoft article for full details ( last 2 para's ) :
kb316666 ( i am not yet allowed to post links , so...)

Originally Posted by newprouser

Hi,
this a good article. but i would like to point out that the last mentioned tip need not be resorted to,as it is actually a myth.

the band width is still available and is allocated only if a program specifically requests it.

Pls read the following microsoft article for full details ( last 2 para's ) :
kb316666 ( i am not yet allowed to post links , so...)

@newprouser is right....the bandwidth reserved will only be used if the windows update takes place....until then u will have full bandwidth...

Nice post.. Thanks for the info..

A question though.. would "everyone" switching to Open DNS servers that you mentioned not make it slow??..

I've heard many users claim that the BSNL DNS servers work better for them.

Are there other Open DNS conf. available.. Can anyone list out a few of them??

oen dns doesnt increase ur download speed,its just load the webpage faster
QOS Packet Scheduler,enabled or disabled wont increase ur slow ur speeds
tcp optimizer works for few users,

DNS server addresses: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
I changed my DNS server addresses long back to the above addresses
After changing my DNS server addresses I could see some increase in the surfing & download speed.

But haven't tried the next 2 suggestions....If any1 have tried please your suggestions.

I have tried all of those settings before. But the only setting that increased my browsing speed is changing the DNS to Open DNS. I couldn't sense any noticeable improvements with other other settings.

Thanks for the information!

good post.. keep up the good work!!

the DNS provided to me from bsnl chennai was

218 248 240 24
218 248 255 14

i am having some trouble with the speed, could the DNS change work?

It will work if the problem is with the DNS. You can give it a try.

thank you i ll try

thanks

The OpenDNS is not speeding up the connection too much. So if due to any DNS problems you are unable to access the sites, then only you should switch to OpenDNS.

When you type a web address URL on the address bar, two things happen:

a) The URL such as www[dot]something[dot]com is not something the computers and networks understand readily. This URL needs to be resolved to the actual IP address. For example, Google resolves to 209.85.153.104. This job is done by the Domain Name Server (DNS).

There are millions of websites and the the DNS looks for the IP transalation in a file called hosts in /etc directory. Obviously, it takes some time to resolve the address.

b) Once the IP address is resolved, the server tries to locate the page specified and then start downloading the text, graphics, flash, and other content from the web site. This also takes some time.

As specified earlier, DNS helps address resolution. Quicker the resolution, that much time saved. It is here that a fast DNS will help. OpenDNS is not just a server but cluster. More often that not, it helps resolving address faster.

But once the address is resolved it plays no further part. DNS will help in downloading data faster.

If you want to speed up DNS you can do the following:

a) List the sites visited very often by you, e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Wikipedia, Indiabroadband.net, etc.
b) Find the IP address for the site by using the command

ping <sitename>

c) Go to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Locate the file called hosts. It has no extention.
d) Open the file using any text editor such as Notepad
e) Enter the entries in the file as follows:

102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com
38.25.63.10 x.acme.com

f) Save the file.

Now all yout popular and favourite websites will be resolved locally itself.

Originally Posted by m222

Tip 1: One of the major problems with BSNL Dataone Broadband connection is the DNS servers they provide by default. Most of the time they are very slow and sometimes they fail to respond. I noticed that I am starting to spend a significant amount of time in DNS resolution with Dataone connection, often it is larger than the time it takes to actually get the reponse. Here is a simple solution to significantly speed up your DNS resolution.

Open up the network connection profile and edit TCP/IP settings. In the DNS server address fields, specify the following DNS server addresses: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
Disconnect the connection and then connect again. You are done.
This specifies third party DNS servers which are significantly faster than BSNL Dataone’s DNS servers.


Tip 2: Firefox users can use FlashBlock extension to prevent downloading of Flash content by default, thereby significantly speeding up browsing experience. You can click on the placeholder icon to display the original Flash content any time. This is more of a passive tip in that reduces data usage to improve your overall experience.

Tip 3: You can try to increase your broadband bandwidth tweaking the TCP/IP parameters. The process is simplified by using TCPOptimizer, a free tool. It helped me a lot but your mileage may vary.


Also, there's nice little tweak for XP. Microsoft reserve 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes. This also affects your Broadband peformance. You can get back this 20% as follows:

Click Start-->Run-->type "gpedit.msc" without the "
This opens the group policy editor. Then go to:
Local Computer Policy-->Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->Network-->QOS Packet Scheduler-->
Limit Reservable Bandwidth
Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab :

"By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this
setting to override the default."
So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO.
This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%.

By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, .................

what it means??? why microsoft reserves it?

This is reserved for Automatic Windows Updates. If you turn off auto updates, this bandwidth is released.